Ingredients
- Dried chilies and Sichuan pepper
- Beef tallow, in the classic Chongqing pot
- Doubanjiang
- Garlic, ginger, and fermented black bean
- Whatever you order to cook: beef, lotus root, tofu, greens
How it is cooked
- The pot is built by frying spices in tallow or oil until the surface is red, then stock is added and it is left to boil.
- You cook thin meat in the pot for seconds and vegetables for longer.
- A sesame or garlic dip is mixed at the table. That dip is a second recipe.
- A split pot, half spicy and half mild, exists. In Chongqing the mild half is sometimes a courtesy rather than the house style.
Taste
Oily, intensely hot, and numbing. The point is the pot plus what you add. A first visit should include something plain, like napa cabbage or potato, so you can taste the broth.
Possible allergens
- Soy sauce, which in China is often brewed with wheat.
- Doubanjiang: broad bean and often wheat.
- Sesame oil or sesame paste.
- The dipping sauce is where peanut and sesame paste are most likely.
- Shellfish if you order it. Cross-contact in the shared pot is total.
- A shared wok or a house chili oil can add peanut, sesame, or shellfish even when the recipe does not.